New Music From Tryezz, Jack Wright & Evan Lipson

Locations have always been important for solo artist Tryezz—the moniker adopted by Chattanooga keyboardist Jonathan Fowlkes—who delivers what he calls his “Scenic Grooves” (partially named as a tribute to our Scenic City) as a way to evoke vivid scenery, often inspiring mental images of modern cityscapes.

For Tryezz’s latest self-released album, The Space After, locations also have a second layer of meaning, as various locations for gigs have provided direct inspiration, and the album is entirely comprised of pieces that were composed during live performances in Chattanooga.

For each track, Tryezz even lists the specific place where the track was created, including Coolidge Park, LIT art gallery, Frazier Avenue and the Majestic 12 Theater, among others.

The Space After is also Tryezz’s first release on vinyl, in addition to being available on CD and as digital downloads, and it serves as a personal milestone for Fowlkes, capturing the vibes from the last two years that have been especially fruitful, out of his prolific 14-year career.

The instrumentals on The Space After are simultaneously modern and nostalgic, immediately bringing to mind particular funk, jazz and dance-pop styles from the ‘80s along with carefully selected sounds and synth timbres.

While certain vaporwave purveyors/revivalists evoke a sort of ironic detachment, that’s not a case here; the tunes are upbeat and playful, but the proceedings are very much sincere with an embrace of shiny artificiality, heard on numerous moments, from beat-box tom-tom runs to bendy, wavering synth chords.

Tryezz’s mellifluous solos use nimble sprints, born from technical chops, and choice pitch-wheel bending, and while approachable, there’s an undercurrent of sophistication both with melodic counterpoint and sound selection, from velvety synths to choice piano accents.

The Space After presents Tryezz in the stylistic space where he is most cozy, balancing comfort with a warm energy viewed through a nostalgic and earnest lens, serving as a perfect introduction to Tryezz’s Scenic Grooves.

Jack Wright & Evan Lipson

Careening Down the Left Coast

(Spring Garden Music)

In saxophonist Jack Wright’s fascinating book “The Free Musics”, he poses the question, in the context of improvised music, “What sound or silence would we make if no music existed, nothing even highly trained players know how to do?”

Wright calls this approach “free playing,” which “does not depend on audience, critic, or posterity...and is not mediated by score, genre, code, one’s secure habits, or the music world.” Instead, it’s the result of performer’s decisions or a “momentary whim, based on commitment to the love of playing.”

The new, live album from Wright and Evan Lipson (on double bass), Careening Down the Left Coast, is many things: stimulating, challenging and often maddening. But Wright points out an aspect that is often overlooked, as it can be compulsory to frame things—even in the realm of art—in terms of utility or progress or doing something that hasn’t been done: the aspect of love.

Among the unrelenting strangeness, one can’t deny that there’s an intense love for performance that’s heard, driving and pushing the musicians. It can be mutual respect, it can be partially narcissism, but there’s an ardent desire for play, in all its glorious messiness.

The album features two long tracks: a 34-minute set recorded at Canessa Gallery in San Francisco and a 15-minute set at Turn! Turn! Turn! in Portland with Doug Theriault on electronics.

The proceedings erupt with staccato fragments and sharp sonic slivers, perhaps the equivalent of preliminary shoves before brotherly fake-fighting, and one question that comes to mind when considering improvised music is whether or not it transcends simply being a catalog of sounds.

For this writer, it’s both thought-provoking and mind-arresting music; with its frequent changes, a total concentration is needed or else it’s pointless to listen. It is the complete opposite of commercial music and easy pleasures. Many may find it hostile, but it simply exists as it is.

Like an invitation to a warm embrace from an enticing stranger, one can think about the motives behind it, or one can simply enjoy it.